His eyes felt gritty. His belly grumbled. He rubbed it with regret. Back at Krieger’s hut and ignoring his warning he had drunk a quantity of that rusty-red water drawn from the well, water the boy Bautista had drawn not for him but for their pathetic, scrawny horses. Krieger held out his canteen for Lupi to drink from. It reeked of iodine tabs.
“Look. I know it tastes like a can of cat piss but surely you’re not going to drink that other stuff?”
“Why not?”
“Catfish piss, man, the water down here’s enough to turn any stomach on earth into a science project. Boil it all night, by dawn it’s still got creatures from the Pleistocene paddling around just waiting to get their meathooks into your personal link in the food chain.”
Even then trying to establish his own sense of identity in a bad situation—no map, no money, no food, no passport, unarmed and lost in the middle of a war zone where all the combatants looked alike to him—where he was wholly dependent on Krieger and his guide Bautista, he had waved Krieger off, pushed the nuzzling horses away and drunk the water from the bucket, cupping his hands to bring it up to his lips. He coughed at its metal taste, which reminded him of butler’s breath, and Krieger clapped and threw his head back.
“Well, it’s your amoeba, Virgil.”
When Krieger first called to tell her she could expect these visitors she immediately recognized him by the scalpel-thin intonations, the crafted patrician air. The intervening years had reconciled in him a greater sobriety under the weight of what he seemed to want, Hannah at once discerned, though there was nothing in particular to which she could point as evidence to support the thought. Sobriety in Krieger, it was a daunting notion. To be sure, she did not suppose that it indicated a greater forthrightness in him than what she had seen in the past—if anything, it lent a sharper edge to the insatiability that followed like a vacuum in his wake. Yet the glib side had not left him, as she listened, and it all rushed in upon her as if it had never been further away than some shadow which trailed along behind, acting in its own manner as a confirmation of the body which cast it there.
“These gross attempts at dignity,” he had said, “and all in the face of what you have to admit is a pretty simple request, well it’s very unbecoming.”
That was one to make her wince, she thought; there was nothing to say, in part because she understood the premise to be false. “Gotta run.”
“Hannah, Hannah you’re acting as if we’re strangers.”
“What do you mean, dignity?”
“Dignity! —stick a pin in it, all this ‘I don’t owe you anything Krieger why don’t you crawl back under your rock.’”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s understood in your tone.”
“Why should I be expected to help you with this business when I know that—”
“But it’s so simple, you don’t have to do anything, you take in two boarders for one day, two days, and you’ll be reimbursed for all expenses.”
“Who are these people?”
“Hannah, politics was never your forte, was it?”
“What?”
“Political stability of a whole region, prevention of a proxy war blowing back into our faces, fourth estate starting to get down in here like mad, all these reporters starting to think Vietnam, making it so it feels like whenever you think you’re thinking aloud, stenographers in the trenches, garbage wagons loaded up with dead villagers, you don’t want to know. What you’ve got is a civilian volunteer who will be accompanying a, he’s like this chieftain, and he has to be gotten out of the zone at least temporarily until these troops figure out who it is they’re supposed to be blasting away at. As it is now, the word’s: unload your munitions into the morning breeze, the whole countryside is shaking. I didn’t plan it this way, there was a foul-up and Lupi, that’s the civvy, Lupi got caught in a crossfire and there was a mix-up—”
“It sounds like there was more than just a mix-up.”
“—and the timing’s premature.”
“You expect me to believe you are working for the government?”
“I didn’t say I was, but it’s nothing for you to worry about, finally boils down to a little requital, little amends.”
“Just because—”
“There you’ve got it.”
“Got what?”
“Look, Hannah, we’re birds of a feather, don’t you remember dear sweet Franzy in his petunia-pink stretch jumpsuits, old Miss I Am Curious (Yellow), and how well he took care of both of us, and how I put you up in that great apartment on, what street was that?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I mean I practically saved your life back in the early days you had nothing to eat, fed you delicacies, too, delicacies. Remember the Scotch haggis I made you, sheep’s paunch and pluck, suet, served it up all steaming and pretty just like you’re supposed to in a bladder tied off with string? haggis, mashed neeps, whiskey neat good whiskey too, Glenfiddich or what, the whole business, great stuff, delicious, you couldn’t get enough.”
“I hate haggis, it’s disgusting.”
“You didn’t hate me though, did you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“And besides preparing your haggis, all that urine stench you think I liked that? your goddamn haggis which you loved so much I tramped all over the whole city, if you’ll recall, I even remember walking miles of subway platform because somebody said they thought they had seen Nicholas down there, heard he lived down there, and that was in the middle of August, heat pouring off the girders, even the steam mixing it up with the Mace and the razors and what am I doing? taking off work traipsing around the sewers looking for who? who else? for your father with all his what’re they called? fugues—”
“Krieger, stop it.”
“—fugues, running off every week with somebody else and with that medical excuse, like he was some Nijinsky so he rated being let off because they found a phrase that would fit him, paranoid schizophrenia, so that they could say”—slowing—“Well yes Vaslav, the simultaneity of your being both a dancer and a horse is readily understood within the psychological context of fused contradictories, horse of a different color type stuff, so whinny away and by the same token, well to make a long windup to a short pitch, Hannah are you listening?”
“Krieger, I can’t help you—” Hannah tried to clear away the physical presence of Krieger’s words. The question was like the mottled stain of a water burn on glass, at once transparent and opaque. How many times she’d studied that, wondered at it.
“No, see? Of course you didn’t. You don’t remember, but God knows I remember.”
“A good memory is needed after one has lied.”
“Wait a minute—Corneille, and where’d you get that? you got it from whom? Nicholas? saint mama Opal? no—from, look, Hannah, that’s why you’ve got to help me I mean I’ve never asked for anything before, have I? and I don’t think even now like I’m asking much.”
“What if I just say no?”
“Times like this you know what I feel like doing?”
“Peter, I’m sorry if you’re in some kind of trouble, but—”
“No, listen, times like this I feel like it’s no longer a question of survival, it’s a question of quality in the face of an absolute impossibility of survival, and then I start to thinking, well hell who needs this kind of bullshit, this pasquinade like making me gargle tetanus toxin, no no no, so sometimes I think, Krieger let’s give it up man, sell everything go off to Majorca drink myself to death under some pretty olive tree out there, maybe have just enough cash set aside for a proper cremation, let them scatter the ashes or whatever else is left of me out in the tetanus-colored sea.”
“So what’s stopping you?”
“My sense of responsibility,” he said, without hesitation.
Hannah scoffed, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard you say. What kind of trouble are you in, anyway?”
“You ever se
en a person’s ashes? They look like popcorn rubbed in moon dust.”
“Your sense of responsibility.”
“Do yourself a favor, Hannah. Give it some thought. Don’t be so negative. I’m not asking much. Besides, they’re already on their way.”
Hannah’s mistake was to do what she had always done: hang up on him. This would only strengthen his determination to see that it was accomplished just the way he had originally planned. There may have been a thousand other ways he would have been willing to consider, but as the minutes passed, her fingers drumming the telephone handset in expectation that he would call back—this too had been one of his faults, a lack of subtlety, for it was true he never showed that kind of restraint—it became clear those were no longer negotiable. Her heart was beating hard. She didn’t like that. As with most people who lack self-respect, she concluded, Krieger had endless enthusiasm for disciplining others.
“He’s all right,” she repeated, thinking, Maybe not so naive.
“I’m sure he is, but I need to see him.”
Lupi’s face was thin and tired against the scrim of plump gold fish and reeds on the lacquered screen. His eyes—so deep-set beneath his brow that he had appeared, from the earliest years of childhood, to be the victim of severe insomnia, regardless of what light he stood in, regardless of how much sleep he had—closed and opened slowly. In his fatigue could she find something to work with? she wondered, as the eyes looked back at her and saw a disarming openness to her whole bearing, her face more expressive than she could imagine or control, although whatever unsubtlety crossed up the need to mask her feelings was offset by what could only be described as goodness of spirit. This was at least how Lupi translated what he saw in her face. It was the moment in which the two of them, locked each into his own course, would come closest to crossing paths—the rest would be only innocent subterfuge and delay. For her part, she considered Lupi not so much obstinate as grouchy, but the shadows which cut those deep half-moons under his eyes made her reconsider.
“He’s asleep, that is, I looked in on him before you woke up, he was sleeping.”
“He’s my burden, not yours,” he said, knowing that he himself could use some contact with reality, call it reality, in the face of all this—and, besides, perhaps he felt affection for the old boy, who was, it had to be admitted, more defenseless than he.
A nest of rubble was all that remained of the cassette. Hannah brushed the pieces together, walked past Lupi and led him along a circuitous path to the second room. The sharp odor of age came off the stacks of objects, and Lupi was reminded of the scent of a wax museum he once had visited on a hot day in Naples. Waxy, warm, musty, like the smell of pages in an old prayerbook. His hand encountered a cable or spring as he followed her down a narrow aisle causing the coffee to slosh over the glass rim and burn his hand, and he cursed as they came into a more open area where the darkness paled. Smaller than the other, this room was lit by a soft dirty-ecru beam that entered through a tent-shaped skylight, panes reinforced with wire and streaked with pigeon guano. He looked up. The birds were there and he could hear them moaning. Filthy bird, dove.
The frail Indian lay on the Victorian four-poster bed. His meager frame belied the strength that was obvious in his taut, almost hewn, features. Spanish, Indian, the traits seemed mixed. Beneath the elaborate carved mahogany finials and flames and the host of dwarfish butter-colored angels onlaid on the headboard, he seemed paltry, out of place there, an ancient baby.
“Sardavaal,” he murmured.
Hannah asked half to Lupi, half to the old man, “What?”
“Sardavaal,” and blinked.
Given what she had deduced about Lupi, the nature of his stewardship, she was surprised to see with what gentleness he placed on the man’s lips the capsule which had emerged from the medicine bottle he kept in his shirt pocket. Cradling the adolescent-sized head, tender as a cantaloupe, up in the palm of his hand, Lupi helped him swallow with some of the coffee. The old man raised his hand, waved weakly, thanking him.
“You got any more blankets?” Lupi asked Hannah. “It’s damp in here.”
“Is there something wrong with him?”
The Indian lay back and burbled Sardavaal’s name once more.
“It’s damp in here is all, isn’t there a heater?”
Hannah pulled a Hudson’s Bay blanket down out of a cupboard and handed it to him. She stood away and watched as he spread it over the man. Crossing her arms over the flat front of the blouse she contemplated asking any number of reasonable questions. Whether it was because she sensed she would rather not know their answers, or remembered the labyrinthine ways in which Krieger sometimes went about accomplishing the simplest of tasks—it had been he who saw to it the old recording of a voice found its way onto her answering machine—she assumed whatever response Lupi might give would itself be something prepared, prearranged, something opposite of what mama Opal might have blessed as All wool and a yard wide.
When they returned to the larger room Hammond was waiting for them. He gnawed at a hard biscuit. Lupi straightened up and stood emphatic to face him, arms wrapped suddenly across his shoulders.
“Who’s he?” Hammond asked.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Work says him here’s up to no good.”
“Tell Henry he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“Course he doesn’t know what he’s talking about I mean I already knew that,” through biscuit crumbs.
Lupi cleared his throat with a forced laugh and his eyes riveted upon Hannah for some suggestion. His coal-black brows were frozen in innocent arches and the smile that flustered him made both ears wiggle and caused his hair, black, thick and short, substantial as crockery, to retreat from his forehead. Hammond shook his head and turned. Hidden behind stacks of bookcases—apple crates and peach crates—which stood as sentinels on either side, pine bowed and slats warped where they snaked up the wall, another door came open. Lupi felt it was imperative that he fill this silence—
“Is that today?” he asked. Hannah handed him the newspaper and followed Hammond out what appeared to be the only other entrance to this windowless bunker.
—what had we? a Stradivarius had been sold in London, the President’s powerboat-racer son was not invited to Thanksgiving yesterday, Hitler diary forger Konrad Kujan was rearrested in Hamburg, sun would set at four thirty-two. A bulbous vignette, a fat-eyed balloon-cat named Garfield, was reproduced on the front page, he saw, and read beside the image a headline about Contra raids on coffee plantations in the province of Matagalpa in Nicaragua, near where he had just been. We are not killing civilians, a rebel had been quoted. We are fighting armed people and returning fire when fire is directed against us … (a new yawn stretched across Lupi’s face, war) … among the seventeen residents killed during several hours of firing were four women and two small children, aged three months and sixteen months … and reading further, the soot-black ink rubbing off on his fingers as he turned the pages, the exceptional story of a man who lost his leg attempting to rescue his dog, Says he has no regrets, dateline San Diego Nov 22, someone named Cole McFarland who leaped in front of an onrushing train having heard the urgent barks—
Dio mio, and shook his head, laid the paper down on a table beside a deep-cushioned chair, looked at the television where this woman dressed up like a tarot card was being interviewed by a man in a tuxedo as she jumped up and down, nearing hysteria when another woman came from behind to drape over the sandwich-board shoulders what seemed to be a full-length sable coat. Settling back into his chair and staring straight at the screen, Lupi held his stomach with his hands, and thought, People willing to lose their legs saving dogs from trains, well, it was a wild kingdom, never different. He wanted more than anything to be asleep. If it were a dream, he decided, he’d prefer to play the role of the train, the locomotive, heavy in its tracks.
2.
UNDER PRESSURE THE mind becomes reductive, sometimes metap
horic. As much as he might try to restrain himself, hold back against what his instincts dictated, Lupi wished he could weave into movie. A beam flickered across the room, causing the set to go blank for a moment.
Static.
Bars of electric light.
And bars of music—a way of addressing any given situation as though it were part of a long film projected at wide angle, movie rolled out there before his eyes, echoing in his ears, the blind spots outside his field of vision to right and left outfitted with sprockets and reality suddenly perforated, loaded onto a reel and set running.
What kind of movie could it be?
Hannah might be movie, the old man might—they weren’t, at least at the moment they weren’t. But he had the power to convert them.
This room could be a set, its as yet undetermined contents switched into props.
Voices could be audio.
Shades and hues in their hands and faces tinted under filter.
Mass and line and enclosure.
Come Sunday Page 3